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Idle No More, one year later

To many Canadians, Tuesday’s protest on Parliament Hill against the federal government’s proposed First Nations Education Act might have looked like the return of Idle No More.

Since the first national day of action exactly one year earlier, and the weeks of dramatic protest that followed, the indigenous rights movement has once again slipped below the national radar. The budget bill it was aiming to stop last December has passed into law and differences within the movement have emerged.

But to the people involved in indigenous activism across Canada, the movement hasn’t gone anywhere. And they say the connections it forged, combined with ongoing frustrations at government policies, means a resurgence is not just possible, but likely.

“Idle No More cannot be extinguished because it has grown so much that it’s reached the homes of a lot of people,” said Sylvia McAdam, one of four women who launched the movement. “And when you get into homes, it’s difficult to bring it out of there.”

Idle No More came out of discussions McAdam was having last fall with three other Saskatchewan women involved in indigenous activism and academics: Jessica Gordon, Sheila McLean and Nina Wilson. At first they didn’t know each other personally, McAdam said, but they all shared a belief that indigenous communities deserved to know more about Bill C-45, the Harper government’s omnibus budget bill they feared would weaken environmental restrictions and put treaty rights at risk.

The women, and like-minded activists such as Tanya Kappo in Alberta, held teach-ins about the bill and spread the word through social media with the hashtag #IdleNoMore.

Suddenly protests were popping up across Canada, like flash-mob round dances that drew on cultural traditions to capture public attention. To McAdam’s surprise, the whole country was suddenly talking about treaty rights and environmental degradation.

While the hashtag was new, the sentiment wasn’t — indigenous activist and Ryerson University academic Hayden King calls it “oldest resistance movement in the continent’s history.” But several factors combined to propel Idle No More to the top of the national conversation: an increasingly educated, young indigenous population; social media to connect them; and years of frustration with government policies reaching a boiling point.

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“I think Idle No More was about saying there’s a growing level of consciousness and awareness that it’s up to all of us,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo. “This is a real moment that we’re in where change is absolutely required. Particularly the young people — they’re saying, ‘We’re ready to be the change right now.’ ”

Veteran activists look back on last winter as a time of powerful inspiration.

“I’ve been to a lot of protests and reclamations and I had never experienced the kind of power and joy and this collective sense that native people were rising together,” said King.

Kappo said people kept telling her, “For the first time in my life, I’m not ashamed to be an Indian.”

To many, it was also the first time that non-indigenous Canadians started paying attention to their issues.

“If you had asked me just over a year ago, before Idle No More, how I could have found that space to have a dialogue with non-indigenous people, I don’t think I would have been able to answer it,” McAdam said.

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Idle No More has spread beyond Canada as a movement for indigenous activists and environmentalists around the world. This week, McAdam and her colleagues were honoured by Foreign Policy magazine as some of this year’s top global thinkers.

But within Canada, there are signs that the movement is not as cohesive as it appeared last winter. In recent months, the Indigenous Nationhood Movement has emerged as an alternative for activists who felt Idle No More was focused on legislative issues rather than the “nationhood” discussions they wanted to prioritize — issues such as reclaiming traditional lands and re-establishing traditional forms of government, according to Leanne Simpson, a Peterborough writer and community organizer involved in the movement.

Activists aligned with each movement — and many identify with both — insist that Indigenous Nationhood doesn’t represent a split, but rather a different approach to the same set of challenges. Both groups emphasize grassroots activism rising from native communities, whether that involves blockades or cultural teachings. Both rallied support to the recent Elsipogtog anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick.

Canada’s native peoples and their concerns are far too diverse to address with a single body, they say.

“I’m not sure that having one voice or one series of goals is the right strategy for transforming the relationship (between Canada and indigenous peoples) in the way we’re trying to transform it,” Simpson said.

For many people involved with the movements, the biggest victory that emerged from Idle No More was the connections it forged among activists across the country — both indigenous and non-indigenous — that lay the groundwork for future actions. And with more resource companies setting up in Canada and drawing objections from native communities, from Elsipogtog to the Ring of Fire, they say it’s only a matter of time before another movement like last winter’s comes along.

“I think whatever comes next won’t be Idle No More,” King said. “It will just be the next wave, as it has been for the past 150 years.”

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